We've confirmed 5,000 exoplanet discoveries, with thousands more to come. Here are some of the most outlandish worlds we've found to date.
in Atacama, Chile, astronomers at the University of Geneva, Switzerland and the Centre for Astrobiology in Madrid, Spain, identified the chemical variations on an ultra-hot gas giant planet along the border between its dayside and nightside.
However, recent evidence suggests the presence of barium high in the planet's atmosphere an element nearly 2.5 times as heavy as iron. It is not known how such a heavy element can remain in the atmosphere without sinking, but some researchers speculate that there may be unexpected convection churning heavy elements towards the top of the atmosphere.
"We first thought that these highly irradiated planets could be pretty boring because we believed that they lost their atmospheres. But we looked at existing observations of this planet with Hubble and said, 'Oh no, there is an atmosphere there.'" WASP-103b is about twice the size of Jupiter, with about 50% more mass, and it orbits much closer to its star than Jupiter does. With an orbital period of less than a day, WASP-103b is whipping around its star while under the effect of extreme tidal forces from the star, which is almost twice the size of the Sun and slightly hotter as well.
“The resistance of a material to being deformed depends on its composition,” said Susana Barros, with the Instituto de Astrofísica e Ciências do Espaço and University of Porto, Portugal, who lead the research. “For example, here on Earth we have tides due to the Moon and the Sun but we can only see tides in the oceans. The rocky part doesn’t move that much. By measuring how much the planet is deformed we can tell how much of it is rocky, gaseous or water.
Singapore Latest News, Singapore Headlines
Similar News:You can also read news stories similar to this one that we have collected from other news sources.
Nick Cave knows it’s kind of weird how much he likes the royalsNick Cave admits to “an inexplicable emotional attachment to the Royals” ahead of attending King Charles' coronation
Read more »
Light Microscopes See Smaller Than Ever Using a Weird Quantum TrickThe resolution of light microscopes has been given a huge boost thanks to the clever use of a common phenomenon in quantum physics.
Read more »
Pete Davison's 'Bupkis' Has Jon Stewart, John Mulaney, and Plenty of WeirdFormer SNL star’s semi-autobiographical Peacock series, also featuring Edie Falco and Joe Pesci, is fascinating but tonally all over the map
Read more »
How Biden Can Win the Debt-Ceiling Fight With One Weird TrickHint: It does not involve a coin.
Read more »
My Plea to You: Let’s Get Weird on Social MediaWith several pillars of our digital lives appearing shaky as of late, and hopeful new platforms like Bluesky popping up at a steady clip, it’s a good time to remember that posting is best when posting gets strange.
Read more »
Weird star system has three off-kilter planet-forming disks | Digital TrendsThere's something odd about the TW Hydrae system, and it took astronomers some time to figure it out.
Read more »